Recently, a colleague of mine approached me to ask if I could help him out with designing a “challenge coin” that could be given out to each of his staff members as a gift.

A challenge coin, if you were not aware, is “a small coin or medallion bearing an organization’s insignia or emblem and carried by the organization’s members” (Wikipedia). My colleague had already picked out a vendor and knew how many coins he’d like to order, so all that was left to do was to design the coin itself for production.

In designing an emblem, I drew upon the following things I knew about the team who would ultimately be receiving this gift…

This particular colleague’s team of staff happens to be mostly composed of developers, and as a means of feeling bad-to-the-bone, they sometimes jokingly refer to themselves as “Strike Team: Husky” (the husky is the university’s mascot). Going along with this thread of jokingly feeling bad-to-the-bone, I wanted to create a challenge coin emblem which conveyed mysterious “hacker vibes.”

Merging these ideas together, I decided to have the challenge coin depict an edgy hacker husky. For the front of the coin, using Photoshop and a Wacom tablet, I drew from recognizable hacker imagery of hooded figures sitting on their computers in the dark. I added the Northeastern University ‘N’ as a sticker to the husky’s laptop because all receivers of this gift are employed at the institution.

I wanted the illustration on the back of the coin to correspond to the illustration on the front, but I struggled with how to do this in an interesting and sophisticated manner. I eventually decided to have the back of the coin literally depict the backside of the husky in the same exact setting (almost as though the Husky were trapped inside a transparent coin). Providing a little twist to this idea, the coin viewer can see that, all along, the character was holding something secret behind his back: a Guy Fawkes mask. This mask provided the final touch of “edgy hacker” vibe that my colleague was looking for.

Here are the files that I submitted to the Challenge Coin vendor:

And here is what the final coin looked like:

Challenge to readers: If you are able to message me with the correct meaning of the code written on the back of the coin, I’ll provide you with a discount on a freelance illustration of your choice!